1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print job management system and method, and in particular, it relates to method implemented in print shops management systems for customizing print-on-demand driver and its graphical user interface.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's work environment where a large number of print jobs are processed with multiple printers, print shop management systems and programs are widely used to manage the print jobs and workflows effectively and efficiently. Examples of such a work environment are professional print shops and print/copy departments at large organizations, where a variety of print-on-demand (POD) requests, such as large-volume duplication and large document printing, needs to be processed and completed by utilizing multiple printers within a short turn-around time. These environments are collectively referred to as “print shops” in this application.
In a print shop management process, each printing job typically specifies a source file that electrically contains a document to be printed, and the required printing parameters such as the size, color and the type of the paper on which the document should be printed, the printing resolution, duplex or single-side printing, and certain finishing conditions, such as book, staple, collate printing, etc., depending on a print job requester's needs. In order to process a large volume of print jobs that each differ in terms of these job parameters, a print shop utilizes multiple commercial grade printers, including black & white and color printers, each with often different limitations on available printer settings, such as the paper size, the paper type, resolution settings, etc. In addition, the print shop employs various finishing devices, such as collators, staplers, hole punchers, folding machines, binding machines, etc.
A print shop (or print job) management process is typically implemented by software or firmware programs executed by digital data processing apparatus such as a control computer or server connected to the printers in a print shop. The print shop management system submits each print job to one or more printers and finishing devices to produce the print job. The job submission may be done automatically by the print shop management system, semi-automatically with certain amount of operator intervention, or manually where decisions of how to submit the print jot to appropriate printers or finishing devices are made by an operator.
Printer drivers are computer software programs that convert the data to be printed to the form specific to a printing device. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,975,415 B2 describes a printer with a data processing apparatus that uses a printer driver software to set print conditions. The general purpose of using printer drivers is to allow users to perform printing jobs without knowing the technical details of each printer model.
A printer driver often contains many data entries that can be set at different values reflecting available printing options offered by a printer. The program also typically provides a user interface (UI) for a user to set or modify the values of the data entries in the printer driver. However, in many print job applications a standard printer driver or its UI may be too complicated for users or print jobs that does not necessarily need to bothered with that many settings or do not need to edit or change many default settings. Therefore, there is a need for a system or server administrator to be able to modify or customize a printer driver installed on a server by deactivating certain selected settings that are not needed, or assigning default settings, for certain types of users or print jobs.